Customer Reviews

Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos

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Meticulously researched and written in a style reminiscent of and often as moving as Dinesan's "Out of Africa", Warner's book tells the sad story of how our national hubris crushed and corrupted the intense love affair many of us had for Southeast Asia and particularly Laos in the 1960s. I've just read the book for the second time after yet another visit to Laos; Warner's book confirms my long held belief that this humble land may outdo us all in its capacity for living and letting live. Lasting scholarship, a joy to read.

Shooting at the Moon is the great image Roger Warner employs to shed light on the USA strategy in Laos and perhaps for all of Southeast Asia. With literary aplomb, Warner brings to life many of the key figures in the CIA 's covert attempt to level the playing field in Laos as the overt war raged in Vietnam. The incredible shift from a small operation to a technically air dependent approach in the context of global political strategy, set up the Hmong people, our allies, for inevitable genocide. Warner succeeds in placing the reader inside Laos in its last days of glory as "The Land of a Million Elephants and a Parasol." In the end, shooting at the moon eclipses the sincere efforts of a handful of people to stave off the darks days in Laos following the communist takeover.

Warner accurately captures the bizarre twists and turns of the U.S. surrogate warfare efforts in Laos. My experience as a direct participant during the 1972-75 time frame gives me the advantage of being able to attest to some of Warner's chronicle. The historical record also provides us information on the failed strategies used by the American State Department in their desire to control events in Laos. Although the North Vietnamese considered all of Southeast Asia as their theater of operations, the American effort, in contrast, became one of disjointed and , at times, bumbling entities running into each other without effective command and control. This does not in any way diminish the heroic efforts of honest men trying too carry out tactical operations while complying with unreasonable controls of the American government bureaucracy. The legacy of these failed strategies can be seen with the difficult acclimation of the Hmong into American society. Warner's spares us the micro detail and intense emotionalism of other books on the same surrogate warfare. This makes "Shooting at the Moon" a good compelling read. With the above bureaucratic absurdities in mind, Warner was right on when he said that "it was the Americans who were shooting at the moon"!

The author of Shooting at the Moon certainly does capture the "magical perversity" of Laos which sometimes reads as a tragedy-comedy. And he does so by detailing not merely the lives of those involved but also by showing how their backgrounds prepared them for their roles. I arrived in Thailand in 1966 but didn't make it to Laos until 1972. Mr. Warner's book has the ring of truth as to the political and cultural background as the drama unfolded, and also portrays the almost indescribable feel of Laos, its perverse magic, its beguiling lethargy. It is certainly the most innocent who suffer the most. This is a fine book well worth reading.

Others have written segments of the United States involvement in Laos while Roger Warner has brought forth the detailed historical accounts written by those who lived them into an interpolation of the events as they occurred. Anyone who participated in the operations which took place in Laos will completely enjoy this wonderful account and glean a great deal of informative information concerning the events which took before and after their tour of duty. John Sweet 56th Special Operations Wing Tactical Units Operations Center Nakhon Phanom 69-70

Shooting at the Moon is a book covering the US military war in Laos. Though some information is passed upon the war in Vietnam or Cambodia, the details are few and only mentioned when having an impact on the Laos war. Good descriptions are made on all the main characters involved and the war is covered both on the washington perspective and on the agents on the field. Only the effects on the civilian population is missing. A short summary is done on what happened after the war, on the further destinies on the peoples involved, on Laos and the refugees in Thailand. No real mention is done about the royalist puppet government of the US, other than a futile attempt to forbid US to do massive bombing flights. There is barely any mention on US activities apart from the military, such as factfinding, espionage and interrogation techniques.


Writing: 5/5

The book is an enjoyable read, well written with an easy to understand chronology. It is written not as an ordinary fact book, but more as a story about the americans involved in the secret wars of Laos. There are few direct quotes and the footnotes hardly points out which facts are received from whom. This is understandable, as many of the sources to the book are still working for CIA and don't want their names tied to some given fact. The the war in Laos is still a touchy subject. You get a feeling of all the main characters in the book, understanding why they took the decisions they did. Also, you get emotionally involved with the american allies in Laos, the Hmong people (in the book known as Meo), how they are used in the war and ultimately betrayed

as the US sees bigger gains to be had by abandoning the people that have been fighting for them.


Facts: 4/5

There is no doubt that this book has been well researched. There is a wealth of information on the persons involved, the most important events, which types of weapons were used, the strategies involved and on all things military. The problems comes

mostly when the author alleges things that aren't directly connected to the Laos wars. At one place he tells us that the CIA has never been involved in drug dealing, even if that has thoroughly documented in books like Alfred W. McCoys The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Columbia. He states that the US had little to with when in 1965, the military regime of Indonesia slaughtered 300 000 indonesians, even though CIA was largely involved in the overthrow of the left-wing government of Sukarno, compiling lists of dissidents and turning them over to the right-wing generals. At another time, the author chides the CIA:s excessive caution regarding the bloody regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia, but never mentions that the US supported the Khmer Rogue regime with food and medicines to be used as a buffer against the Vietnamese. These are details, but as all these details show a will to hide the dirtier side of the CIA war, one wonders what else has been missed in the book.


Balance: 3/5

This is a book purely from an american perspective, although their Hmong allies are covered quite well. No greater depth goes into anyone fighting on the enemy side, no commanders are mentioned and the civilians (apart from the Hmong) aren't mentioned more than perhaps 2-3 times. This onesidedness are displayed directly in the first chapter describing a coupe in 1960 against the american backed royalist government in favour for a more neutral government, somewhere between the americans and the vietnamese. No where is it mentioned that this was in fact a counter coupe to when general Phoumi, with US help, rigged the ballots in 1958 to throw out the 21 leftist candidates from the national assemby.

However, this bias is moslty in the selection of what to cover. No moral perspective is given on the use of Napalm, or bombing Laos with the equivalent of 25 Hiroshima bombs, as no moral judgement is passed on the vietnames disregard of peace treaties and borders. While the vietnamese recruiting to the army is called 'brainwashing', the Hmong side 'hard recruitment methods' are also mentioned. What is more suprising is when the author names the CIA officers involved as 'descent people', even though one of them collects the ears from dead enemies and thinks that the marines should be sent against antiwar protesters instead of national guard 'because the marines shot better' and another officer thinks that Vietnam, the country they suppousedly are helping, should be bombed into the stoneage.


The faults mentioned above do not, however, deduct from the generally good experience when reading the book, and the story is genuinely fascinating. I recommend everyone to read this book. One should complement this book with some on the rest of the vietnam war, mostly regarding the effects of the weapons used on the population, as those parts are severly lacking form this book.

The author spent years gathering the material for this book and Warner has written the definitive book on the period. Rarely has a non-participant so closely captured the feel and intensity of the times. I worked as a fighter pilot with the Raven FACs and was totally astounded at how good this book reads. A triumph.

"Shooting at the Moon" is a good book, very readable...
The winner of the overseas press club's award, "Shooting at the Moon", By Roger Warner is an interesting read. It was originally published under the title "Back Fire."
Warner has dedicated his life trying to tell the "super secret, clandestine war in Laos during the sixties. The main character of the book, Bill Lair was the architect of an efficient and effective approach to war. Along the lines of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Lair was able to empower the native mountain tribes, by arming them and training them to fight their own war. However, the politicians had to get involved and screw up the whole thing by sending Americans in to fight, thereby a lot of American lives were lost.
Bill Lair, was the CIA operative who convinced the Hmong native General Pang Pao to fight the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese Communists. Bill Lair didn't want any Americans in the Laotian civil war. He was convinced if he armed the Hmong (Meo) and trained them, they could fight their own war. (They'd probably won if the U.S. Politicians hadn't grown the war to an outlandish scale).
Bill Lair had trained the national Thai police force response teams. He was very successful with his dealings with government and PARU (Police Aerial resupply Unit) in Thailand, before he moved on to Laos.
The secret war in Laos which was denied by the American government still gives the people who "weren't there", but actually were, heart burn. Many were killed and many still suffer from the deniability of the Armed Forces and politicians alike.
Shooting at the Moon is a real CIA spy operation. The Air America heroes should be recognized for what they did. But, in reality, they have been reduced to "denied old men" who still faithfully keep the secret.
This book brings an accurate account to the table for those who didn't know, and some satisfaction to those who knew the real story.
Roger Warner should be applauded for his effort and his dedication to the truth. Although the government, both ours and theirs (Laos). They continue to shush Roger Warner, but he also should be counted as a hero too. Trying to tell the story is like swimming upstream, or like shooting at the moon!
Shooting at the moon is a grand book. It is exciting and instructive. I recommend this book for those who still care about these secret heroes. Especially Bill Lair the CIA secret agent. By the way, our heroes are still denied some benefits. They weren't there remember?
JR Hafer [...]

Warner's history of the Laotian conflict from 1960-1975 is an amazing story of a secret war run by secret agents working for a secret agency.

Hidden behind the Vietnam War, the author reveals facts about the "secret war" that was even more critical than Vietnam at top levels of government. This book will change your understanding of modern Southeast Asian history and the magnitude of the challenges the United States faced.

What makes this book engaging, and at times absolutely riveting, is that Warner gained full access to the hidden CIA operative, Mr. William Lair, who laid the foundation for this secret American paramilitary campaign.

December 7th, 1941 is the day Lair's life changed forever. He was a 17 year old student at Texas A&M University when America was attacked. He convinced his mother to allow her only son to join the army so he could defend the ideals he grew up with in America's heartland.

He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy with the 3rd Armored Division and fought his way to the Elbe River. There, he came face to face with Stalin's troops. He and many of his partners in arms realized that the next war, with a more fearsome enemy, had already begun. Communism was about to become a rising tide that would cover nearly half the planet.

After the war, Lair returned to Texas A&M and completed his degree. A new government agency formed less than three years earlier was on campus interviewing. Lair and his friends had never heard of it. It was called the CIA. He signed up.

In March, 1951, the CIA sent Lair to Bangkok on a seemingly impossible mission reminiscent of the opening scene of Apocalypse Now.

Lair's first and only mission was to fight communist insurgency in Thailand and in surrounding countries. He would travel, alone, to a third world nation with few English speaking people. Once there, he must organize a cadre of local fighters by any means necessary and train them in guerilla warfare. The budget was slim. Some surplus WWII weapons were available.

Lair took the job and Warner takes us on his incredible adventure.

Warner paints a fair picture of the background, situations and players in the Laotian conflict. His individual portraits ring true but the characters worthy of respect in the book are few and far between.

The "secret war" was filled with bungling bureaucrats, deceptive diplomats, corrupt businessmen, Asian warlords, greedy opportunists and loose cannons. Warner's history of the Laos conflict accurately reads like a train that's out of control. Some mistakes seem obvious but it's hard to see exactly which things could have been done differently to shift the outcomes.

Lair, a quiet, soft spoken man, rises to his challenge to become an American Lawrence of Arabia. He raises a 30,000 man secret army of Laotian and Thai fighters that actually stops the communist war machine. Until decisions at high levels of government in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, China and the United States changed the course of history and the outcome.

Despite the fact that this war ended 30 years ago, Lair's methodology for fighting foreign conflicts holds great potential for America, even in 2005.

This book is a front row seat to an epic conflict that was all but invisible to the American public. Lair is a hidden American hero whose actions will earn your respect.

Shooting at the Moon details the "alliance" between the American government and the Hmong (Meo) minority people of Laos during the Lao civil wars. Roger Warner writes with a very readable, journalistic style that draws the reader in. The book tracks several main "characters" throughout the war's development and escalation, explores possible motivations for American involvement, and the aftermath of the American betrayal of the Hmong. If you have read "The Ugly American," then you will see many instances of those fictional events happening for real in Shooting at the Moon.

As a university student who read this book to complement a research paper, I was disapppointed. Although very reader-friendly, Warner's style also verges on fiction and it is difficult to separate true fact from his interpretations of events. In such a book, this may be unavoidable, given that he attempts to plop the reader down into Laos of the late 1960's and 1970's. Warner does his job in that sense, but in doing so he blurs the line between fact and fiction. Moreover, I find that he often glosses over events and writes in a very American style, sometimes very dismissive of the Lao and Meo peoples. However, if you are looking for a "real life" wartime Communism vs. Capitalism cliffhanger, then Shooting at the Moon should fulfill that role quite nicely. For more thoroughly researched and more comprehensive books on Lao history, including the Lao Revolution, I would recomend Arthur J. Dommen's Laos: Keystone of Indochina and anything by Martin Stuart-Fox.